How much is the PLO really worth?
The Samed, the economic arm of the PLO, may have become dormant since
the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, but it is sitting on mountains of
gold. At least, that is what appears from data obtained by hackers who got
into the Samed's computers
By Ronen Bergman
Ha'aretz November 28, 1999
Ahmed Qureia, also known as Abu Ala, the speaker of the
Palestinian parliament, was and still is the head of the Samed (Sons of
the Palestinian Martyrs - the economic arm of the PLO). Both Abu
Ala and Muhammad Rashid, Arafat's senior economic adviser and
confidant, refuse to disclose any information on the PLO's assets
beyond the borders of the Palestinian Authority. The publication of
these details would undoubtedly cause an uproar in the streets of
Palestinian towns. How can it be, many would ask, that we are
suffering here from economic hardship while the PLO is sitting on
massive sums of frozen assets abroad, and not using them?.In the
middle of 1988 there was a breach of Samed's computer system,
which connects the PLO's headquarters in Tunis with its economic
representations abroad, and its financial records were revealed. These
records showed enormous fiscal activity, which included many bank
accounts in Europe, and a complex system of individuals and
institutions involved in the transfer of funds. The bank accounts were
spread out all over the world, including in Tunis and East Jerusalem,
and were never registered officially in the name of the PLO, but were
rather listed under the names of private individuals, including Abu Ala.
Computer experts understood that they had not uncovered the whole
picture. The accounts on the network documented only partial
information on funds transfered under the heading "The chairman has
transferred x thousand dollars to you."
The hackers who had broken into the PLO's computers closely
followed the activities of the network, and were able to uncover the
whole process by which the funds were transfered - from their
beginning as a mysterious grant from somewhere, through several
couriers to their final destination. The hackers discovered, among
other things, allocations to "martyrs", which were paid through bank
accounts in East Jerusalem. The purpose of each bank account was
apparently determined by the activities of its bearer or courier. If, for
example, an account was registered to a person with known
connections to terrorist activities, the funds transfered through it were
used for such activities, if the person was involved in the PLO's
welfare projects, the money went to help widows and orphans.
The system carried records of the transfer of tens of millions of
dollars, if not more. The experts who studied the data discovered that
some of those employed in the transfer of funds made a habit of
retaining a certain percentage of each transfer, and it is unclear
whether this was done with or without permission. The breaching of
the network did a lot to clear the deliberate smoke screen surrounding
the PLO's financial apparatus. Apart from Arafat himself, only Abu
Ala and Rashid know all of its secrets.
A report compiled recently by qualified assessors in Israel, and which
was handed over to government officials, found that Samed continues
to hold vast sums of money and assets around the world, despite the
fact that it is an inactive organization in the advanced stages of
atrophy. The heads of Samed, said the report, systematically desist
from selling off these assets and transfering them to the PA territories
to improve the poor economic situation there.
Shares in Mercedes
The establishment of the Palestinian Authority entailed the
transformation of a secret underground terrorist organization into an
autonomous authority which was supposed to be law-abiding and
organized, on the verge of independent statehood. This transformation
is not complete. Arafat never ordered all the branches of the PLO to
internalize the character of this change. Samed was left as a white
elephant, perhaps paralyzed and deteriorating, but with a very high
monetary value.
The PLO was an organization with massive economic power. For
years it received billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and from the
sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. Those states also deducted 5 percent
from the wages of all Palestinians who were working under their
jurisdiction, and transfered those funds to the PLO's bank accounts in
Switzerland and Spain, for the "Palestinian Liberation Tax Fund." This
levy alone brought in about $50 million per year.
The economic branch of the research department in Israeli Military
Intelligence estimates that throughout the 1970s and 1980s the PLO
added some $5 million to its coffers every day. The organization had
tremendous assets and many straw companies, which helped it
acquire shares on European stock markets. The Kuwaitis, for
example, aided the PLO in purchasing shares in companies such as
Mercedes. The organization had great economic influence in France,
Switzerland, Italy, Holland and Scandinavia.
In order to control its vast assets, the PLO set up Samed, which
made investments for it. Samed's administration was highly classified
and under Arafat's direct command. Arafat himself signed all the
checks. The PLO was willing to reveal only the socialist-inspired
aspect of Samed's activities. The organization published a newspaper
called Samed al Ectsadi (The Economic Samed), which showed
photographs of Palestinian women weaving and Palestinian men
plowing fields in agricultural farms in Africa and Lebanon.
Samed had several administrative divisions, including offices for
industry, trade and marketing, agriculture and agricultural produce, a
research and publications department, and a department for the
production of films and the dissemination of information. The latter
initiated the production of several public relations films and
propaganda films on the Palestinian struggle. At the end of the 1980s
it invested millions of dollars to produce a feature-length film. The raw
material was sent to a film lab in Rome for editing. One night, in July
1989, unknown persons broke into the lab and disposed of
everything relating to the film.
Investments on Wall Street
It is hard to determine the real value and scope of the PLO's total
assets. According to figures published in the world media, hundreds
of millions of dollars of PLO money were transfered from Lebanon to
Switzerland at the beginning of the Israel Defense Forces' siege of
Beirut in 1982. As early as the 1970s, according to those reports,
Arafat had already made huge investments on Wall Street, in London,
and in several Arab banks, with the help of sources in the former
Soviet Union, specifically the Moscow Narodny bank. The PLO had
also made substantial investments in large industrial firms which traded
on the stock exchanges of Frankfurt, Paris and Tokyo, and had
purchased real estate in the upmarket Mayfair district of London.
These reports also say that the PLO is the controlling shareholder in
the Monte Carlo radio station, and in other radio stations. He also
owns, or did own, a string of newspapers, (one of which, Suat al
Bilad, was edited by Muhammed Rashid during his revolutionary
period). In addition, the PLO owns many buildings in Cyprus,
Greece, France, Spain, Jerusalem and Lebanon, and has invested in a
number of airlines in Africa.
In a report published at the end of 1996 in the French newspaper Le
Figaro, it was alleged that by the beginning of the Gulf War, the
PLO's cash reserves had reached more than $7 billion - an enormous
sum that Arafat disbursed in numbered accounts in Zurich, Geneva
and New York. The Israeli Military Intelligence estimates that the
figures quoted by Le Figaro are inflated, but they agree that in the
1970s and 1980s the PLO was a very strong economic power.
According to various intelligence sources, the PLO was a partner in
several airline companies, which also functioned as a screen for its
secret activities. The PLO was a partner in the establishment of the
airline of the Maldives and was later the owner of the Guinea Bissau
airline, then headed by Faiz Zaidan, who is now in charge of civil
aviation for the Palestinian Authority. Samed acquired a duty-free
shop in the international airport in Tanzania. The PLO's representative
in Zimbabwe, Ali Halima, said that it was a purely economic
investment, and that during the same period, Samed bought several
other stores in Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
In 1991, when the Persian Gulf states stopped supporting the PLO
and expelled all the Palestinian workers employed there following
Arafat's alignment with Saddam Hussein, the PLO reached the brink
of bankruptcy. It is well-known that some of Samed's assets were
sold during that period to finance the general operations of the PLO,
but it is unclear what portion of these assets was liquidated. Three
years ago, the comptroller's committee of the American congress
carried out a secret investigation of this matter, and even took
testimony from experts in Israel. To this day the report of that
investigation has not been published. It is known, however, that the
investigators reached an unequivocal conclusion regarding everything
connected with the extent of the PLO's assets abroad .